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If however you don't want to hear about fglrx's weaknesses then I can understand you wanting anyone with anything bad to say about it to leave.

I enumerated you ati mainly problems. I recognize them. What hesitates me is that a non ati user learns about others problems using this forum, and then use other problems as a rule for ati bashing with no direct knowledge of fglrx functionality.

Comment

I would think a broad discussion of the issues when running Linux on PC hardware is warranted.

Your nvidia card can not load fglrx so you don't have problems with ati propietary drivers (other than your fears with it). By the same reason you have no experience with fglrx so you cannot help to ati users with problems. There is no reason you post on an ati fglrx support forum.

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In this specific case it's Homeworld 2. A truly marvelous 3D RTS. The thing is, I never did finish it back in the day so I thought I'd give it a whirl. On my 8800 it ran supersmooth. It was a joy to play. Unfortunately, it's not so on my 4870.

Agree, there's some problem in Ati drivers or in Homeworld. However, Farcry was unplayable on my Geforce 6600GT, because textures were messed up.

@Cutterjohn

Hey fanboi! nVidia drivers actually fucking work while AMD's are an amateur nightmare and closed source. Thier OSS drivers are half-baked and nothing more than a political ploy for the OSS zealots and will be nothing more than that, ever.

Haha, hey fanboi! Nvidia drivers actually suck in 2D a lot and they're closed source too! They're stability was far from percect also. Ati OSS drivers are better in 2D, rock stable and work out of the box and they're not damn blobs.

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Nvidia 2D performance suck/sucked a lot. KDE 4 was unusable due to their poor drivers.

I remember that, and an update was promised.

Then the improved drivers came, and everyone said how things were much better now. And I downloaded the drivers.

And hosed my X. Then I read the README, which said "your card is not supported anymore, screw you". So KDE was unusable again.

Eventually, it improved, though, but that laptop died, and I bought an ATi for my new desktop.

But I guess anecdotes only count if they praise Nvidia drivers. The rest is "fanbois". Actually, I had never had an ATi card in my life before last year. I had a Hercules, a no-name VGA, a Voodoo, an integrated intel and an nvidia. It's nvidia that made me switch

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Sure, but all we're getting here is anecdotes, which has nothing to do with the ration of good vs. bad experiences.

Adam

One problem I have with going by the anecdotes is that they will accuse anyone with an ATI card having problems is being 'user error.'

It's never the drivers but rather the user. So, what's he doing wrong?

I don't see how every ATI card owner is at fault so when one reads around 80% of ATI owners who use Linux complaining about their video drivers that it's all them?!?

If the binary blob IS STILL a problem in an older generation card like the HD 4xxx series, don't you think that indicates poor support?!? Like, c'mon, folks! How old are those cards?!?

I guess your standard solution is to just shrug your shoulders and say to use the OSS driver. That would be fine if it covered everything. However, some ATI owners are not all that satisfied with what they get with the open source driver... for whatever reason. Oh yeah, they don't know what they're doing...user error....

Well, I am going to see if I can afford two cheap cards, an ATI and Nvidia. I am sure I can find a place for an extra card or should be able to sell one. But, if I figure this isn't an affordable idea, I will go Nvidia for sure at this time. I cannot trust that these issues are marginal...

I have gone to OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint and Debian forums. The top rated distros including ones that are officially supported.

You can either post in them or just do a search of 'ati', 'fglrx', '4850', '4870' (pick a card model) etc.

If I am mistaken, then someone can prove it. I have gone into the forums for insight on users' experiences and I concluded the dissatisfaction rate is extremely high. Lots of people say 'get a nvidia' when there's a 'which card should I get, ATI or Nvidia?'